The Easy Way to Teach Scales

Forget playing the scales, I used
to get this way just teaching them.

It was my first year of teaching. I had a heterogeneous beginning band class, and I was ambitious enough to include horns, giving me four different pitches of instruments to contend with when note naming. I wanted so badly for them to have as many scales as we could get, or at least get them up to the scales they needed for the All-District Band Auditions they would face the next year. So I pushed. But every time we started a new scale, it was a nightmare. Going one group at a time, grinding out the notes, checking the fingers, it took forever. And even with my best efforts, nearly half the group would play wrong notes. I wish I knew now what I knew then. There is a much, much easier way to teach scales to beginners!

Welcome to Four Note Patterns

Every scale can be broken into two equal halves, each with four notes. The idea here is simple. Rather than plowing through an eight note sequence, plow down two four note sequences, then when those sound good, put them together. I had read about teaching Four Note Patterns as a precursor to teaching scales, but for some reason I never tried it until this year. So far it's working wonderfully. It's so much faster to have them note name up and down four notes, and if you're smart they only have to learn one new note at a time to learn the next pattern. Pretty soon you'll have two patterns you can put together into a scale. 

For the students, the four note patterns were simple. The first time we put together a scale pattern from the two four note patterns, the consensus was that it was easy. This was a big change from my previous attempts at learning scales. In fact, it was a dramatic change from all of my previous scale teaching experiences! With our brass classes we put together two scale patterns in two days, both of which were free of wrong notes (except for the one or two students who had range issues). It sounded even better the next day. This stuff is working wonders for our scale teaching!

Sound Before Sight

To make it more simple, I have not yet passed out a scale sheet. In its place, I made a sheet listing all twelve four note patterns on the top half of the page, and then all twelve scale patterns in the bottom half, with only the names of the notes. So a four note pattern might read "C - D - E - F" and the corresponding scale pattern reads, "C - D - E - F - G - A - B - C". They use this for reference when learning the new patterns. Eventually the next warm up/technique builder page I pass out will include the scales written on notation, but by then they'll have it memorized and can start focusing on playing it and relating it to the staff, rather than trying to recall the note from the staff and get the right finger/embouchure/air response in time. This approach of sight before sound with scales is similar to the approach advocated by Ed Lisk, and I know it's used by many beginner teachers out there. It's a piece of cake to make your own, but I've included by page, which I give you full license to use if you like. 

A Quick Note About Pacing

We started each class off with the two four note patterns that they had the range for at the time, and at most we had to teach one new note. Next year I'll be starting these much earlier in the year. At any rate, we've been successful in reviewing the previous patterns and adding as many as one pattern every day or two. A previously learned pattern has taken, at most, two additional days to sound really good, and often just one additional day. With that in mind, I try to only add the next one when the previous patterns all sound good and require little or no review. I only want to spend a few minutes a day on it, after all. When picking new patterns, I try to shoot for what should be really easy based on their range (I don't want to stretch them more than a second or third at a time), and I also don't want to teach more than one new note. My thinking is, the smaller and more achievable the steps, the higher the success rate and the less time it will take to refine.

Have you used this method of teaching scales to beginners? Do you have any other tips or a different approach? Please share your experience in the comment section! 

Thank you for reading! Until next time, take care, and good luck!

Musically yours,

Mr. Cooper

Four Note and Scale Pattern SBS Template